Motor Control and Reading Fluency: Contributions beyond Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming in Children with Reading Disabilities.

Multiple domains of deficit have been proposed to account for the apparent reading failure of children with a reading disability. Deficits in both phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming are consistently linked with the development of a reading disability in young school age children. Less research, however, has sought to connect these two reading related processes to global theories of deficit, such as temporal processing deficits, in the explanation of reading fluency difficulties. This study sought to explore the relationship between aspects of temporal processing, as indexed through measures of motor fluency and control, and measures of reading related processes, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming, to word reading fluency. Using structural equation modeling, measures of patterned motor movement were found to be negatively and significantly related to measures of phonological awareness. Measures of oral and repetitive movement were found to be positively and significantly related to measures of patterned movement. Finally, phonological awareness was found to be a significant predictor of word reading fluency both independently and through rapid automatized naming. No direct relationship between measures of motor control and fluency and word reading fluency was found. These findings suggest that temporal processing, as indexed by measures of motor fluency and control, are moderately predictive of the facility with which a child with a reading disability can access, manipulate, and reproduce phonetically based information. Implications for the inclusion of motor based measures in the assessment of children with reading disabilities and future directions for research are discussed

The Development and Evaluation of the Hearing Intervention Battery in Arabic (HIBA) for Auditory Perception in Children with Cochlear Implants

The Hearing Intervention Battery in Arabic (HIBA), is a multi-modal auditory training intervention, that was developed based on the recommendations from our published systematic review of the literature on the effectiveness of auditory training (AT) for children with cochlear implants (CIs). HIBA was primarily intended to help improve speech and pitch perception in Arabic-speaking children with CIs. Due to the lack of auditory and speech assessment tools for the Arabic language, the A-CAPT, an Arabic version of the English Chear Auditory Perception Test (CAPT) was developed. The A-CAPT was validated prior its use in this project with 26 children with typical hearing. There was a strong agreement between the test and retest measures and normative data and the critical difference values were calculated which were similar to the British English CAPT. A randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the HIBA training programme was conducted with 14, 5- to 13-year-old Arabic-speaking children with CIs. The control group received art training following step-by-step drawing and face-paint exercises while the HIBA multi-modal training group received games involving communication interactions (DiaPix), speech cue discrimination (Alefbata.com), and pitch discrimination (musical discrimination using a keyboard). All tasks were interactive and designed to be completed by the children together with their parents or caregivers. There was a double baseline measurement, followed by a 4-week intervention period before a post intervention assessment. There was a significant improvement in consonant perception for children who received the HIBA multi-modal training intervention but this was not observed in the active control group. There was some evidence of generalization of learning, as observed by improvements in the non-trained task (phoneme discrimination) for the intervention group but not for controls. It was unclear if one particular element of the HIBA led to these improvements. Parents were actively involved in the multi-modal training group and their feedback indicated that the most preferred part of multi-modal training was the communication interaction tasks using the Diapix. To understand which element of the HIBA led to improvements in speech perception and whether the duration of training and sample size masked any gains, a trial forward in a larger scale should be conducted. In addition, to improve the quality of evidence of the study, collaboration is need to achieve a double blinded study and minimize bias. Findings of this project may suggest that children with CIs and their parents can benefit from regular and sustained access to age-appropriate auditory training materials and activities. In addition, findings would extend the current understanding of the impact of auditory training on CI outcomes in children and provide inspiration for a more comprehensive rehabilitation scheme for CI users

The Relationship of Somatosensory Perception and Fine-Force Control in the Adult Human Orofacial System

The orofacial area stands apart from other body systems in that it possesses a unique performance anatomy whereby oral musculature inserts directly into the underlying cutaneous skin, allowing for the generation of complex three-dimensional deformations of the orofacial system. This anatomical substrate provides for the tight temporal synchrony between self-generated cutaneous somatosensation and oromotor control during functional behaviors in this region and provides the necessary feedback needed to learn and maintain skilled orofacial behaviors. The Directions into Velocity of Articulators (DIVA) model highlights the importance of the bidirectional relationship between sensation and production in the orofacial region in children learning speech. This relationship has not been as well-established in the adult orofacial system. The purpose of this observational study was to begin assessing the perception-action relationship in healthy adults and to describe how this relationship may be altered as a function of healthy aging. This study was designed to determine the correspondence between orofacial cutaneous perception using vibrotactile detection thresholds (VDT) and low-level static and dynamic force control tasks in three representative age cohorts. Correlational relationships among measures of somatosensory capacity and low-level skilled orofacial force control were determined for 60 adults (19-84 years). Significant correlational relationships were identified using non-parametric Spearman’s correlations with an alpha at 0.1 between the 5 Hz test probe and several 0.5 N low-level force control assessments in the static and slow ramp-and-hold condition. These findings indicate that as vibrotactile detection thresholds increase (labial sensation decreases), ability to maintain a low-level force endpoint decreases. Group data was analyzed using non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis tests and identified significant differences between the 5 Hz test frequency probe and various 0.5 N skilled force assessments for group variables such as age, pure tone hearing assessments, sex, speech usage and smoking history. Future studies will begin the processing of modeling this complex multivariate relationship in healthy individuals before moving to a disordered population

Educational Implications of Spatial Memory

Spatial memory is recruited during many classroom-based activities. As such, it is essential for both educators and students to understand how it operates in a classroom context. This chapter begins by providing a systematic overview of how spatial memory is used across a variety of academic domains including math, language arts, and science. It also reviews some of the typical characteristics of students who have relatively poor spatial memory abilities. Finally, it discusses how to best provide efficacious classroom support for these students. Taken together, it provides an accessible overview of the educational implications of spatial memory that educators and students can consider when trying to optimize learning in their classrooms

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Multisensory learning in adaptive interactive systems

The main purpose of my work is to investigate multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration in the design and development of adaptive user interfaces for educational purposes. To this aim, starting from renewed understanding from neuroscience and cognitive science on multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration, I developed a theoretical computational model for designing multimodal learning technologies that take into account these results. Main theoretical foundations of my research are multisensory perceptual learning theories and the research on sensory processing and integration, embodied cognition theories, computational models of non-verbal and emotion communication in full-body movement, and human-computer interaction models. Finally, a computational model was applied in two case studies, based on two EU ICT-H2020 Projects, "weDRAW" and "TELMI", on which I worked during the PhD

Physiology, Psychoacoustics and Cognition in Normal and Impaired Hearing

​The International Symposium on Hearing is a prestigious, triennial gathering where world-class scientists present and discuss the most recent advances in the field of human and animal hearing research. The 2015 edition will particularly focus on integrative approaches linking physiological, psychophysical and cognitive aspects of normal and impaired hearing. Like previous editions, the proceedings will contain about 50 chapters ranging from basic to applied research, and of interest to neuroscientists, psychologists, audiologists, engineers, otolaryngologists, and artificial intelligence researchers.